Switzerland At Risk Of EU Blacklist After Credit Suisse Leaks

The fallout from a huge leak of Credit Suisse banking data threatened to damage Swit-zerland’s financial sector on Monday after the European parliament’s main political grouping raised the prospect of adding the country to a money-laundering blacklist.

- Kalyeena Makortoff and David Pegg

The European People’s party (EPP) called for the EU to review its relationship with Switzerland and consider whether it should be added to its list of countries associated with a high risk of financial crime.

Experts said that such a move would be a disaster for Switzerland’s financial sector, which would face the kind of enhanced due diligence applied to transactions linked to rogue nations including Iran, Myanmar, Syria and North Korea.

“When Swiss banks fail to apply international anti-money -laundering standards properly, Switzerland itself becomes a high-risk jurisdiction,” said Markus Ferber, the coordinator on economic affairs for the EPP.

“When the list of high-risk third countries in the area of money laundering is up for revision the next time, the European Commission needs to consider adding Switzerland.”

The EPP released the proposal after media outlets including the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and Le Monde revealed how a massive leak of Credit Suisse data had uncovered widespread failures of due diligence by the bank.

The Suisse secrets investigation identified clients of the Swiss bank who had been involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.

“Bank privacy laws must not become a pretext to facilitate money laundering and tax evasion. The findings point to massive shortcomings of Swiss banks when it comes to the prevention of money laundering,” Ferber said. “Apparently, Credit Suisse has a policy of looking the other way instead of asking difficult questions.”